Washington — A bubble is quickly forming inside the obscure but powerful U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles appeals from federal workers who have been terminated or allege they were victims of prohibited actions by their employers.
A CBS News review of agency records shows the board has experienced a surge in new cases amid the torrent of layoffs by the Trump administration.
In the past week, the board received at least 1,845 new cases from employees nationwide. That compares to approximately 100 cases each week in December and January. The surge in challenges from federal employees threatens to slow or choke the board’s ability to respond to complaints, according to multiple sources familiar with board operations.
MSPB
MSPB is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has six regional offices nationwide. It reported having approximately 190 full-time employees in 2024.
The agency juggles a series of regular duties, including legal research, studies of the civil service, and — of particular note amid widespread federal layoffs — it hears cases brought by federal workers who argue they were subject to unfair firings or improper and politicized conduct inside their federal agencies.
“The MSPB simply won’t be able to review the appeals in any kind of timely fashion,” Pamela Keith, a Washington-based attorney who specializes in federal workforce issues, told CBS News. “Before Trump, appeals could take more than a year. Now, we are looking at two or more years of cases.”
An MSPB spokesperson told CBS News in a statement that “MSPB has experience adjudicating increased workloads, such as the influx of more than 32,000 furlough appeals in 2013.”
The board saw a surge in cases in 2013, due to the furloughs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers after a budget standoff and disruptions in federal agency services.
In a report reviewed by CBS News, the board said that in 2013, the surge of cases hampered the board’s operations, including by “straining MSPB’s processes and IT infrastructure.”
The report also said that “MSPB’s paralegals and legal assistants in the regional and field offices worked overtime to manage this massive workload and MSPB hired temporary employees to assist in docketing cases. In addition, a furlough appeal docketing ‘strike team’ was established at HQ to assist the regional and field offices in docketing these appeals.”
The Washington-based Government Accountability Project, which advocates for government whistleblowers, has championed the importance of the board. The nonprofit said that “MSPB serves as a critical guardrail for democracy and accountability by protecting federal employees from unjust employment actions such as wrongful termination, suspensions, or demotions, ensuring fairness in the federal workforce. MSPB also works to protect whistleblowers who expose government fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers, told CBS News, “Make no mistake — this backlog is not a bug, it’s a feature of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to dismantle the civil service. The MSPB is one of the few places federal employees can turn to for appealing a wrongful termination, including terminations made for political purposes. For many federal employees, it’s the only place. With mass layoffs and blatantly political firings occurring daily under Trump’s watch, we expect this paralysis to spread further at tremendous risk to the survival of the non-partisan, professional civil service.”
